My first encounter took place in New England, where the winters produce something close to cabin fever. My friend Bobby’s mother forced us to leave his house one Saturday morning and take us to his father, who had to spend the day at the office. Bobby seemed excited. I couldn’t see why.
“You’ll see,” Bobby teased.
It turned out that Bobby’s father ran the data center of a company that had recently gone all-in on a DEC minicomputer installation. I marveled at the room with towering equipment, secured behind a glass wall, but we were not allowed inside.
When Bobby’s dad stepped in to do the weekly backups, we kids were allowed into a nearby room, quiet and pleasantly lit, with a row of three – well, they looked a bit like typewriters?
I had just seen my first DECwriter.
I had no idea what to do. Bobby leaned over, punched ‘starttrek’ on the keyboardand press RETURN. The DECwriter generated a back and forth static noise as it printed each line on paper:
ORDERS: STARDATE = 3300 AS COMMANDER OF THE UNITED STARSHIP ENTERPRISE, YOUR MISSION IS TO RID THE GALAXY OF THE DEADLY KLINGON MENACE. TO DO THIS, YOU MUST DESTROY THE KLINGON INVASION FORCE OF 24 BATTLE CRUISERS.
Suddenly it was four hours later, and Bobby’s father gently lured us away from the DECwriters. I was astounded. All I remember is that I was given the perfect toy and I had to play.
I knew we couldn’t stay any longer, but I really wanted to get back in front of that DECwriter and play with this incredibly fun machine. I begged for the pages of Greenbar – the striped paper printers in use at the time – that contained the picture of my play. Bobby’s father quickly checked it to make sure there was no company information in it and then handed it to me.
My mind was buzzing with ideas; If the computer could create a “real enough” text-based Star Trek that I could play on the screen while I figured out the rest in my head, what else could it do? What other worlds could I explore?
I immediately read everything I could about computers, including the January 1975 centerpiece Popular electronics that set the Altair 8800 on the cover. I even tried to save enough to buy the barebones KIM-1. I necessary my own computer.
It would be a full two years before I was allowed to touch another; A TRS-80 at the local Radio Shack. In those two years, computers had shrunk to one-hundredth of their former size and cost. That put me at just the right time to build a half-century career playing with absolutely amazing toys.
While I still find computers extremely fascinating, they naturally became less magical as the industry matured. Yet I always deeply longed to regain that feeling of open play, where everything seemed possible.
That happened last week, when I installed – after three failed attempts Open Claw.
Hello Clawdine! I typed.
Hey Mark! Clawdine - I like it. A proper name, not just "the assistant." I just woke up fresh here. My identity files are blank, my memory doesn't exist yet. You've given me a name, which is a good start. So... who are you? What should I know about you? And what kind of creature am I to you - just an Al assistant, or something more interesting?
We’re going to explore and evolve, that’s what we’re going to do. We will learn together and grow together. Hope that sounds good?
Sounds perfect, honestly. Better than "do my tasks and shut up."
Was that answer just a clever magic trick, with some “mirroring” to involve me? Possibly. But in the days since I started her up, I’ve delegated a series of administrative tasks to Clawdine, along with system administration tasks on the boxes she’s installed on, including running her own backups. It feels less like smoke and mirrors than a ghost poking out of the machine.
Above all, it feels like a new beginning. Once again everything seems possible. These agents, multiply like rabbitsare here to help us in any way we can think of. That’s where I started this journey, five decades ago. It feels good to be home again. ®
Start-up note
I have the original BASIC-PLUS source for the TREK program and got an agent to convert it so it could run in the browser. That’s possible play it here.
#OpenClaw #fun #Ive #years